How Much Can I Rent My House for in Northern Virginia? Landlord Tips

How much can I rent my house for?

This is a question we’re often asked by potential landlords who want to know how much they could earn on their property in the Northern Virginia market. This is not always an easy question to answer on your own. Today, we’re offering some landlord tips on how to establish an appropriate price for your rental property.

Research Rental Estimates Online

If you are looking for an answer on your own, my advice would be to search the internet sites you might think about advertising on. Search as if you were a tenant. Look for properties that are a close match to your home and in the same general location. That will give you an idea of what your competition is asking. You can also go to Zillow and look for their Rent Zestimate. For most homes, you’ll get a general calculation. This isn’t a perfect science. These online sites cannot factor exact features and the condition of your property. However, it gives you another data point.

There are some limitations to this. First, you don’t know that anyone has actually agreed to the price that’s listed online. You can’t know the exact amount that the home was leased for. You’re only seeing what’s on the market now. You can’t go back in time to get a more historical picture and better data points. Those are challenges.

Gather Data from the Multiple Listing Services (MLS)

There’s a better way. By looking at the actual data from the MLS, we can go back to any time period. We can look for particular features and consider the size of the home. We can get information from properties that are near yours. This provides a more complete picture of what properties have actually rented for. We can also measure how long the property was on the market, or the number of days it took to get the home leased. There’s an important relationship between the rental price and the amount of time it takes to find a tenant.

Landlord Tips: Pitfalls of Incorrect Pricing

There are two problems with incorrect pricing. If you overprice your home, it will take longer to rent, and many times that can translate into lost rental income which more than offsets the higher price. On the other end of the spectrum, if you underprice the property, you’re leaving money on the table. You might have been able to earn more if you had priced it higher.

Do the right research. We offer a free rental price analysis for anyone with a home here in Northern Virginia. If you’d like to request that analysis or you have any questions about Northern Virginia property management, please contact us at Real Property Management Pros.